A nightmare on my street
My wife instructed me this week that I needed to “trim the tree in our yard.” At first Christmas flashed through my mind and I thought, why would I put Christmas lights out this early? But she was talking about cutting some branches on a bush in our backyard that had grown too tall and bushy.
So I foolishly said, isn’t that what trees are supposed to do, grow? The look and the tone I got in response quickly convinced me that I would be trimming the tree in very short order.
Now those of you who are kind enough to read my column know that I hate yard work. I hate it with a passion that is usually reserved for root canals and tax audits. Yard work for me is the definition of a job never finished. You cut the grass and almost overnight it grows back. Grass is like some kind of horror monster that you just can’t escape or kill.
While I’m cutting the grass, I can almost hear it taunting me like the Terminator. I could swear it is saying, “I’ll be back” as I make each pass, lopping off its regenerative top. I approached cutting the bush with the same enthusiasm that I do mowing the lawn. Somewhere between comatose and dread was where you could place my excitement level.
So I grab the hedge trimmers out of the garage and approach my nemesis. I could tell my old-fashioned manual trimmers did not intimidate the bush. Maybe I should have invested in one of those gas or electric trimmers that looks a little like a chain saw. I bet that would have put a scare into that hedge. I start slowly, almost tentatively, cutting a few of the smaller branches that are protruding from the bush’s rather stout body. Then I look to the top of the bush and see that several of its limbs have grown straight up and now this bush is well over 9 feet tall. My wife wants me to literally cut this thing down to size, somewhere around 6 or 7 feet tall.
It will be a battle I’m not sure I can win. In order to do this, I will need a ladder to reach the top. Me being the handy man that I am, I immediately know that I do not own a ladder, but I do have an old dining room chair in the garage. So I retrieve the chair and place it close to the bush and climb up on its rickety legs with my trimmers in hand.
The battle begins.
I have no idea what kind of bush this is; I call it a sticker bush. And believe me, this thing lives up to its name. As I clumsily chop away at the top limbs, the rest of the bush is stabbing me like it is Halloween on Friday the 13th in Texas. The bush and I do battle for what seems like hours, but really was about 15 minutes. In the end, the shrub gets cut and so do I. Who got the worse end of the deal is up to interpretation.
I go into the house and head to the shower to soak my wounds. I emerge from the shower to find my wife and 8-year-old watching cartoons. I walk into the living room and sit in the chair opposite from my wife waiting for her to heap praises on me for bringing this unruly bush in line. She says nothing. I wait a little while thinking surely she will see the scratches on me and figure out that I just did battle with the Freddy Kruger of the shrub world. Ten minutes pass and nothing is said. So finally I tell her that the tree is trimmed. My loving wife says, “Oh good, did you pick up the limbs?”
Did I mention I hate lawn work?